Central Europe Books

Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends

Lonnie R. Johnson

Amazon Price: $35.95 List Price: $39.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Oxford University Press, USA Amazon Marketplace: 31 new & used starting at $12.30

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A must for the serious student of Central European politics 4 out of 5 stars.
17 of 19 people found this review helpful.

Before coming and working in the Balkans, I taught European political-military affairs and history, and this has got to be one of the best books on the subject for an American audience. Lonnie Johnson is an American academic who has lived many years in Austria and has an Austrian wife, so his perspective is personal as well as academic. He writes in such a manner that he will be understood by the average American who hasn't done a masters in European international relations, yet goes into sufficient detail to for his book to qualify as a serious treatment of the subject. The conclusions and points that he draws apply to all of Europe, including the West. For us, to whom 1776 is a long time ago, to be able to understand why the Europeans are the way they are, this book goes a long way to explain it. We debate about whether the Confederate flag should fly over the South Carolina capital. Imagine centuries of such symbolic and real gestures that make such trivial issues matters of national importance. Centuries of antipathies and changing alliances are brought into clear perspective in this book. If you only have time to read one book on the history of Central Europe, its shifting borders and repressed emotions, make this it.

Why didn't I give it 5 stars? I like to save those for the Winston Churchills and the Vaclav Havels who not only can write well, but were an important part of the story.

Editorial Review:

This historical survey of Central Europe covers a region that encompasses contemporary Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia. Now in its second edition, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends contains a new epilogue-updated to cover events since 1995-and several redesigned or updated maps. Each chapter is thematically organized around issues or events that are important in helping students develop an understanding of the region's internal dynamics. Johnson illuminates the competing religious, cultural, economic, national, and ideological interests that have driven the history of Central Europe. Thorough, objective, and focused, Johnson's work stands out as both a useful core text covering an area of growing interest and a brilliant account of a region that is only just beginning to receive the attention it deserves.

Vienna: The Past in the Present : A Historical Survey (Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought)

Inge Lehne, Lonnie Johnson

Amazon Price: $15.95 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 2 to 5 weeks By: Ariadne Press (CA) Amazon Marketplace: 7 new & used starting at $15.95

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Editorial Review:

This chronologically organized survey of Vienna from its origins to the present does not presuppose any advance knowledge of Central European history. Accenting the cultural, political, and social influences, the authors cover all of the major periods of development: the Roman settlements, the medieval residence of the Babenbergers and the early Habsburgs; the Turkish sieges; the Reformation and Counter Reformation; the culture of the Baroque court; reforms of the Enlightenment; the lifestyle of Viennese Biedermeier; political and cultural transformations in the age of Emperor Francis Joseph; interwar Vienna; the Nazi occupation; post-World War II four-power occupation; and the development of the city from 1955 till today. In all cases the authors show how past historical events and developments still influence the city today. Special attention is given to the development of traditions and attitudes which are peculiar to Vienna and the Viennese.

Vienna 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna

David King

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“Reads like a novel. A fast-paced page-turner, it has everything: sex, wit, humor, and adventures. But it is an impressively researched and important story.”
—David Fromkin, author of Europe’s Last Summer


Vienna, 1814 is an evocative and brilliantly researched account of the most audacious and extravagant peace conference in modern European history. With the feared Napoleon Bonaparte presumably defeated and exiled to the small island of Elba, heads of some 216 states gathered in Vienna to begin piecing together the ruins of his toppled empire. Major questions loomed: What would be done with France? How were the newly liberated territories to be divided? What type of restitution would be offered to families of the deceased? But this unprecedented gathering of kings, dignitaries, and diplomatic leaders unfurled a seemingly endless stream of personal vendettas, long-simmering feuds, and romantic entanglements that threatened to undermine the crucial work at hand, even as their hard-fought policy decisions shaped the destiny of Europe and led to the longest sustained peace the continent would ever see.

Beyond the diplomatic wrangling, however, the Congress of Vienna served as a backdrop for the most spectacular Vanity Fair of its time. Highlighted by such celebrated figures as the elegant but incredibly vain Prince Metternich of Austria, the unflappable and devious Prince Talleyrand of France, and the volatile Tsar Alexander of Russia, as well as appearances by Ludwig van Beethoven and Emilia Bigottini, the sheer star power of the Vienna congress outshone nearly everything else in the public eye.

An early incarnation of the cult of celebrity, the congress devolved into a series of debauched parties that continually delayed the progress of peace, until word arrived that Napoleon had escaped, abruptly halting the revelry and shrouding the continent in panic once again.

Vienna, 1814 beautifully illuminates the intricate social and political intrigue of this history-defining congress–a glorified party that seemingly valued frivolity over substance but nonetheless managed to drastically reconfigure Europe’s balance of power and usher in the modern age.

The World of the Trapp Family

William Anderson

List Price: $24.95 By: Anderson Publications Amazon Marketplace: 17 new & used starting at $13.75

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Great book 5 out of 5 stars.
42 of 48 people found this review helpful.

This book is a really great behind-the-scenes type book about the real Von Trapp family. Fans of the movie may not like it as much, because there isn't very much stuff written about the making of the SOM. However, it really gives you a very clear picture of the way the story reall was without detracting from the magic of the movie.

This book is great.... 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 21 people found this review helpful.

....because I find so many information about the Trapp Familiy which I don't know. I saw the two german movies from 1956 und 1958 and the american from 1965, and I like all this films.

The pictures make it easy to read.

But there is something, that I don't like. Martina, who died in 1951. Maria Augusta wrote only one and a half sentences about her stepdaughter. Why had she done that ?

Good, that I've read "Yesterday, Today and Forever", so I know the tragedy of Martina's death.

...

Editorial Review:

Immortalized in "The Sound of Music", the Von Trapp Family fled Hitler-invaded Austria to start new lives in America as the Trapp Family Singers. Their dramatic story is updated with information about the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont, where the singers conduct music camps and plan their world concert tours.

Prague in Danger: The Years of German Occupation, 1939-45: Memories and History, Terror and Resistance, Theater and Jazz, Film and Poetry, Politics and War

Peter Demetz

Amazon Price: $18.25 List Price: $25.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Amazon Marketplace: 57 new & used starting at $8.98

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A dramatic account of life in Czechoslovakia’s great capital during the Nazi Protectorate With this successor book to Prague in Black and Gold, his account of more than a thousand years of Central European history, the great scholar Peter Demetz focuses on just six short years—a tormented, tragic, and unforgettable time. He was living in Prague then—a “first-degree half-Jew,” according to the Nazis’ terrible categories—and here he joins his objective chronicle of the city under German occupation with his personal memories of that period: from the bitter morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived from Berlin to set his seal on the Nazi takeover of the Czechoslovak government, until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945, after long seasons of unimaginable suffering and pain. Demetz expertly interweaves a superb account of the German authorities’ diplomatic, financial, and military machinations with a brilliant description of Prague’s evolving resistance and underground opposition. Along with his private experiences, he offers the heretofore untold history of an effervescent, unstoppable Prague whose urbane heart went on beating despite the deportations, murders, cruelties, and violence: a Prague that kept its German- and Czech-language theaters open, its fabled film studios functioning, its young people in school and at work, and its newspapers on press. This complex, continually surprising book is filled with rare human detail and warmth, the gripping story of a great city meeting the dual challenge of occupation and of war.

The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History

Derek Sayer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In The Winter's Tale, a play of 1610, William Shakespeare gave a coastline to Bohemia, a landlocked country. Three hundred and twenty-eight years later, his compatriot Neville Chamberlain would call a brewing war in Czechoslovakia, as the country was called, "a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing." As Canadian scholar Sayer writes, knowingly, Bohemia eventually got its coastline, one "guarded by minefields, barbed-wire fences, and tall watchtowers with machine guns," while the West took little notice. The general ignorance of all things Czech would cost Europe dearly, for conflagrations from the Thirty Years War to World War II (and even sparks that might have ignited World War III) have begun in the tiny country known by many names---Czechoslovakia, Bohemia, Moravia. Canadian scholar Sayer writes of the Czechs' struggle over centuries to define themselves as a people and nation, and he does so in a vivid, detailed narrative that will enlighten readers who are unfamiliar with the critically important center of Eastern Europe. --Gregory McNamee

Prague: A Cultural and Literary History (Cities of the Imagination)

Richard D. E. Burton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent book for the first-time visitor or resident or anyone between. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Excellent, well-written book about one of the great cities of the world. Orderly, logical structure for the first-time visitor as well as for those who visit Prague often or live there. Not only a good writer but an accurate, non-revisionist historian. A pleasure to read and to share with others.

Central and East European Politics: From Communism to Democracy

Jane L. Curry

Amazon Price: $39.95 List Price: $39.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Amazon Marketplace: 23 new & used starting at $11.04

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Editorial Review:

This long-needed text explores the other half of Europe--the new and future members of the European Union along with the problems and potential they bring to the region and to the world stage. Clear and comprehensive, it offers an authoritative and up-to-date analysis of the transformations and realities in Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and Ukraine. The book presents a set of comparative country case studies as well as thematic chapters on key issues, including EU and NATO expansion, the economic transition and its social ramifications, the role of women, persistent problems of ethnicity and nationalism, and political reform. For students and specialists alike, this book will be an invaluable resource on the newly democratizing states of Europe.

Frederick the Great: The Magnificent Enigma

Robert B. Asprey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

History As A Thriller 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Robert Asprey's life of Frederick The Great was a fascinating read. The author's understanding of his subject makes Frederick come to life. One can understand the forces that created the man, his strengths and weaknesses.

Asprey also provides a clear view of Europe in Frederick's times. The constant conflicts between its nations is difficult to understand from the perspective of the modern reader. In our times Europe has been at peace for more than 50 years (despite the conflagration in the Balkans) yet in Frederick's time the great nations could not stop warring with each other.

Most fascinating in this book, however, is the suspense filled descriptions of Frederick's major battles and the masterful way the king manuevered through the 7 year war. This was very exciting reading. It also provided insights as to how an inferior force can prevail against what appeared to be overwhelming odds.

Editorial Review:

A cradle-to-the-grave of one of the most intriguing rulers in history, King Frederick the Great who raised the small kingdom of Prussia to major power status in the turbulent military and political struggles of the 18th century. A cruel childhood forced him to lie, deceive and cheat in order to enjoy, if only for brief periods, the life of an intellectual. Once on the throne he spent many years of often brilliant field command of his army in seemingly endless campaigns. He remained an intellectual, however, an essayist, historian, poet, flautist, consorting when possible with the French writer Voltaire.

Open Letters: Selected Writings

Vaclav Havel

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Havel's greatest essays in one single volume 5 out of 5 stars.
27 of 27 people found this review helpful.

Vaclav Havel has been called "the greatest moral thinker of our time" and "a sort of EuroGhandi." While most noted as a playwright, Havel's most important works have been of prose; essays such as "Power of the Powerless" and his "Open Letter to Gustav Husak" allowed his nation to retain hope under brutal conditions. Now, Havel's greatest essays, from the early sixties to his "New Year's Address" after his 1989 election to the presidency, have been collected in a volume that will, unlike most political texts, make you think as well as feel.

The most impressive of Havel's essays would have to be "Power of the Powerless" which was written in only a few days during the mid-1970's at the urging of a Polish dissident. It stresses that, when a government holds its citizens actions, words and even minds at bay, that gives the citizens a power that the government can only dream of; the power of truth. This idea of truth, which is contained in one form or another in all of Havel's writings, serves as the very basis of his political thought, which outlines man's current journey towards moral politics. A thought-provoking and deeply illuminating book

Editorial Review:

Spanning twenty-five years, this historic collection of writings shows Vaclav Havel's evolution from a modestly known playwright who had the courage to advise and criticize Czechoslovakia's leaders to a newly elected president whose first address to his fellow citizens begins, "I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you." Some of the pieces in Open Letters, such as "Dear Dr. Husak" and the essay "The Power of the Powerless," are by now almost legendary for their influence on a generation of Eastern European dissidents; others, such as some of Havel's prison correspondence and his private letter to Alexander Dubcek, appear in English for the first time. All of them bear the unmistakable imprint of Havel's intellectual rigor, moral conviction, and unassuming eloquence, while standing as important additions to the world's literature of conscience.


From the Trade Paperback edition.